German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Wednesday will land in Israel ahead of his expected meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi.

The visit’s official capacity is for Maas to acquaint himself with Ashkenazi. Unofficially, Maas intends to caution Israel against its stated intentions to begin annexing parts of the West Bank on July 1.

Maas is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and Ashkenazi. He will later also confer with Palestinian leadership over video conference after Israel cited its coronavirus quarantine orders to prevent Maas from visiting the West Bank. He will then travel to Jordan in the evening for additional talks.

This is Maas’ first trip outside of Europe since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

According to sources within the Foreign Ministry, Israel’s intent to annex West Bank settlements is a grave concern for Germany, which seeks to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians and prevent a violent escalation in the region.

Germany is a key ally of Israel in international organizations but is also a staunch defender of international law institutions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declarations that annexation will be promoted on July 1, in less than one month, have put Berlin in a major quandary. On July 1, Germany will be taking over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union and will be assuming the presidency of the UN Security Council. These two roles will require the Germans to choose between their allegiance to international law and UN resolutions on the one hand and their historical commitment to Israel on the other.

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In late May, Germany and the Palestinian Authority released a joint statement expressing “grave concern” over Israel’s declared intention to begin annexing parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

Source:  https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-german-foreign-minister-lands-in-israel-expected-to-warn-netanyahu-against-annexation-1.8910253

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Felix Klein, Germany’s first anti-Semitism commissioner told public radio that in order to better understand anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish sentiment establishing a central register is to be a priority when he takes office on May 1.

“There has always been anti-Semitism in Germany, but it is more blatant now, more aggressive,” he told rbb public radio.

Read more: Head of Germany’s Council of Jews calls for stronger laws against anti-Semitic protests

He stressed that there were already good regional initiatives, but that a nationwide register would help get “a good overview” of anti-Jewish offenses in Germany.

His comments come just a day after thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin wearing Jewish skullcaps, known as kippas, to protest anti-Semitism and the attack on an Israeli by three Arabic-speaking men last week.

Anti-Semitism ‘at heart of society’

Klein said that while there are concerns about anti-Semitism among some Muslim migrant, he is most worried about what he termed “secondary anti-Semitism, which lies at the heart of society…people who are prejudiced; supposedly funny jokes at the dinner table.”

“That’s a challenge for our society, which can only be solved medium-to-longterm,” he told rbb.

He also said he wants to improve cooperation with Germany’s Muslim associations, whose response to anti-Semitism, he says, could be “more coordinated.”

Read more: Islam in Germany: Muslims prefer to be talked to rather than talked about

Bundestag debate on Israel

Meanwhile, MPs in the German parliament, the Bundestag, marked the 70th anniversary this year of the founding of the State of Israel, with some lawmakers wearing kippas for the occasion.

Read more: The kippa – a sign of respect for God

The Bundestag approved a motion brought by the CDU and CSU, the FDP and the SPD on Germany’s historical responsibility and future friendship with Israel.

All parties agreed that “anti-Semitism must never again be part of Germany” and that Germany must be “Israel’s guarantor,” as Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt put it.

The Left’s parliamentary party leader, Dietmar Bartsch, called the fact that there was any anti-Semitism at all “shameful.”

Migrants and anti-Semitism

SPD chair Andrea Nahles said that Germany was responsible for the killing of millions of Jews in World War II and that that “responsibility does not simply end, neither for subsequent generations nor for those who come to our country,” alluding to anti-Jewish sentiment among some of the recent migrants to Germany from Muslim countries.

“We will always and categorically defend Israel’s right to exist,” she added.

Conservative CDU MP Volker Kauder stressed that anti-Semitism in Germany had been there long before the recent arrival of Muslim migrants after populist AfD politician Alexander Gauland said that “anti-Semitism should not turn into collateral damage of a misguided refugee policy.”

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/nationwide-register-for-anti-semitic-offenses-in-germany-commissioner/a-43545539

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One of the world’s most fraught relationship triangles is the one connecting Germans, Jews, and Muslims. Suspended over that triangle is of course the Holocaust. For seven decades, post-war Germans thought they understood their unique burden and responsibility. It was and is to atone for Auschwitz by taking it as a mandate to be and to do good — at home and abroad, today and tomorrow.

But the passage of time has a funny way of confusing old certitudes. One question that was never clarified — because it never needed to be asked — is whether German atonement should be particular or universal.

The particularist conclusion says that Germans must never again harm Jews. They must protect their former victims wherever they can, on the streets of Berlin or Tel Aviv, at the United Nations or on the Golan Heights.

The universalist lesson is general: Germans must never again discriminate against any minority — white, brown or purple; Jewish, Muslim, or Wiccan; Western, Eastern or exotic. And Germany, which once not only murdered millions but also turned millions more into refugees, must be a haven to those human beings who legitimately deserve refuge today.

For decades, there was no conflict between the particularist and the universalist responses to the German past. Germany has stood by Israel more reliably than any other country in the EU. Germans have also become the world’s most avid commemorators. They memorialize the Holocaust in their cities, on their buildings, on their streets. (The form I find most moving is Stolpersteine, the little brass “stumbling stones” that I described here.)

At the same time, Germany for a long time pretended that other minorities pose no major dilemma. Muslims started coming to Germany in large numbers in the 1960s, mainly as Turkish “guest workers”. They have kept coming ever since, from various countries. (In the Neukölln borough of Berlin, the latest buzz is about Syrians driving out Turks.) Today about 5 million Muslims live in Germany.

And yet Muslims were never accepted as “belonging to” or “being part of” Germany. When a former German president used that exact phrase in 2010, a controversy erupted that still rages, and even strains the current governing coalition.

But then there was the autumn of 2015. Nobody who was in Germany during that refugee crisis will ever forget the experience. Many Germans in late summer of that year got goosebumps as they saw on the TV news — and pay attention to the iconography — crowds of dark-skinned men, women and children in tattered clothes, camped on the platform of an eastern-European train station (in Budapest) where they were trapped, waiting for … trains.

The trains they were waiting for promised to take the huddled masses not east but west, not toward death but toward liberty and safety, in a land called Germany. “Germany, Germany,” the wretched masses were chanting, right through the cameras and into German living rooms. Victims of war atrocities were using the English name of the country that had once run trains from the same place toward the camps. Now the name meant salvation. History appeared to have symmetry. Germany was good at last.

Out poured emotions that had been bottled up for decades. As the refugees disembarked from their trains in September 2015 — in Munich, the site of Hitler’s failed putsch of 1923 and the unofficial Nazi capital — Germans were lining the exits and streets. Entire families had turned out. They bore teddy bears, candy, bottled water. Above all, they bore smiles. All across the country, Germans volunteered — their money, clothes and time — to help the refugees.

But historical narratives are clean in a way that real life is not. A few months later, on New Year’s Eve 2015, hordes of young Muslim men in Cologne assaulted, molested and violated scores of German women who had turned out for the fireworks. Most of the men were neither refugees nor Syrians, but economic migrants from northern Africa. But the distinctions were lost in the outrage that followed.

Out poured countervailing emotions, also bottled up for a long time: Fears of “the other”, of alien men bringing misogyny or even terror. And also bringing hatred of Jews.

To say that all or even most Muslims hate Jews is untrue and grossly unjust, just as it was to tar all Germans as anti-Semitic in the 1930s. But to pretend that hatred of Jews does not run like a deep current through Muslim culture today as it ran through German culture then is panglossian, naive, delusional — and probably just disingenuous. Just visit a few schoolyards in Berlin, where the children of Muslims use “Jew” as a catch-all slur and harass the children of Jews.

And there it is: The universalist German responsibility (don’t stereotype minorities like Muslims) has slammed right into the particularist duty (protect Jews). And the “Germans”, from teachers and deans to parents and politicians, have frozen up, like deer in headlights. Some can’t even bring themselves to admit the distinction — on the playground, Muslim, Jew and gentile alike are probably German citizens.

In that helplessness, mainstream Germans resemble people everywhere who genuinely try to do right in a world that just isn’t. And they prove, yet again, what Karl Popper called “the paradox of tolerance”, that bane of liberal progressives in particular. If society values tolerance above all, Popper observed, it will eventually be destroyed by the intolerant. The only answer, he thought, is to be resolutely intolerant of intolerance.

A first step is for Germans to find words for their dilemma. In so doing they must steer between the Scylla of anti-Muslim populism and the Charybdis of politically correct waffle. It may take new and fresh faces to do so.

Perhaps a young, female, Muslim face such as Sawsan Chebli’s. Today, she is an up-and-coming politician in Berlin. But she was born in Germany as a stateless daughter of Palestinian refugees. She is German and Islamic, part of the majority and the minority, a former refuge seeker who is now among the refuge givers. The other day, she suggested that asylum seekers trying to integrate into German society should, like Germans, be required to to go on field trips to former concentration camps. Among native-born Germans her idea proved controversial. It shouldn’t be.

Andreas Kluth is editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global. You can reach him at a.kluth@handelsblattgroup.com

Source: https://global.handelsblatt.com/opinion/germans-jews-muslims-and-the-paradox-of-tolerance-908064

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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas takes the oath of office after the new government was appointed after German Chancellor Angela Merkel was elected for a fourth term as chancellor in the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, March 14, 2018. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Solidarity with the Jewish state is a cornerstone of German foreign policy, Berlin’s new top diplomat said Sunday as he boarded a plane to Israel for his first visit.

“Responsibility for and solidarity with the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, standing up for its security and against anti-Semitism — that’s at the center of our foreign policy,” he said. “And it’s the compass that I followed on my way to politics.”

During his two-day trip to the region, Maas is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. He will also visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and meet with survivors. In Ramallah, he is set to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Every trip to Israel is special, especially a few weeks before celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state,” Maas said. That momentous occasion is an important date in Germany, he added, “because the friendship that we enjoy today with Israel is thanks to the great men and women that made it grow. For us, it is a great gift.”

Maas, who became foreign minister earlier this month, affirmed German “continuity” regarding Middle East policy. “We want to strengthen our special connection to Israel in the future,” he said.

His talks with Netanyahu, however, may focus on some contentious issues, as Germany, along with other European states, is currently advocating for the maintenance of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, while Israel has been seeking to have the pact, in which Germany was a key partner, either significantly modified or abrogated altogether.

“Germany remains committed to the nuclear agreement with Iran in order to avoid an increasing arms race in the Middle East,” the German Foreign Ministry posted on its website on Sunday morning.

Another potential point of friction between Jerusalem and Berlin is the upcoming vote for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2019-2020.

The two countries are competing for the same slot, which dramatically decreases Israel’s chances to enter the prestigious council for the first time.

During his March 14 inauguration at the German Foreign Office headquarters in Berlin, Maas reiterated his personal commitment to Israelbut also made plain that Germany will not withdraw its candidacy for the Security Council.

“For me, German-Israeli history does not only entail a historic responsibility. For me personally, it is a deep motivation of my political activity,” he said.

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Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/solidarity-with-israel-central-to-german-foreign-policy-new-fm-says/

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An objective observer can fathom why German elections matter for Israel.

 German and Israeli national flags . (photo credit:REUTERS)

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